Skills

Female Headers

Description: Single row of 40-holes, female header. Can be cut to size with a pair of wire-cutters. Standard .1" spacing. We use them extensively in our SparkFun Original boards. They mate very well with break away male headers.

You can all stop complaining now. I needed a six-pin header, so I pulled the pin out of the seventh, scored it with the nearest knife, broke it and filed it flat with a multitool I could reach from my chair. No effort at all and I have a very nice-looking piece that matches what I need. Yes, you will lose a pin - but they warn you. In making all the headers I needed for my board, I lost 20 cents worth of headers. Big whoop! These are great!

These are NOT “break-away headers”. They’re a 1x40 female header that’s brittle enough you can snap it in pieces. You will lose at least one pin on every break, the edges will look like hell, and if you’re unlucky you’ll also lose the last pin you wanted to keep… giving you a useless 1-pin-too-few header.
I had some luck melting the edges smooth with an old soldering iron, but the results were shoddy at best. A saw or dremel works a little better, but you’re not going to just get clean snaps.
SF - please sell 1x4, 1x5, 1x6, 1x8 and other common sizes. Put them in a grab bag if they can’t be sold individually, or 10-packs, or any other combination. We know you carry them because your Arduino “shield” kits all have them and they look and work a good bit better than these.

Would be much better supplied in multiples of 2 (2,4,6,8 etc.) and a single the you could combine them as necesary. It is time consuming as well as wasteful to cut these and make any effort to make the cut end look good.

I am not sure I agree with this: they are not very strong mechanically and you would not end up having a perfectly aligned row, with the risk of bending the male connector when you plug it in, in addition to boards that do not look that good.
Besides chances are you would quickly end-up using up all the short ones and needing to cut the longer ones to our needs => back to square one.
If you want good-looking, easy to break out female pins, look at the pin headers with machined pins (swiss style or something) that SF provides - they might be what you are looking for.

Although these are not true break away headers, I use Craftsman’s Handi-Cut cutting sheers and this breaks them apart perfectly every time. The top part of the sheers has a straight blade and the bottom part has a flat surface, so you can actually line up the straight blade in between pins and use the flat part to brace the back of the cut. There are similar sheers out there but I haven’t seen any others with the blade on just one side and a flat surface on the other and this feature is what makes these perfect for the task.

I always add a few of these to my orders because they are pretty useful for connecting sensors. I just wish they were cheaper.

I have found the best way to cut these is by scoring the plastic very lightly all the way around. Then use a lighter to heat up a razor blade and let the heat do the work. It usually takes 2-3 tries to go through but it works and I am able to not loose pins. The down side is that the end will always look hideous, just use a little sand paper to straighten it up. If it is meant to go in a permanent project where looks matter, I will sacrifice a pin.

Yes you lose a pin every time you break, they are cheap enough that it doesn’t matter. Score it along the next pin to be certain you don’t mess up the set you need then hit the side with a plastic welder if you need it to look relatively pretty.
20 bucks worth of these and most will not find themselves wanting for female headers any time soon.

I don’t see a good way to cut these without losing a pin since the amount of plastic in the wall between each pin is so thin.
If you accept losing a pin you can make the cut on the side closer to the pin you will lose. So you get to keep the entire wall, thin as it is – it works.
I used a sharp wood chisel and a hammer and got a good cut. A very light touch up with some sandpaper dressed the ends nicely.
I should have read these comments before I figured this out the hard way - I looked closely for the breakaway score, couldn’t find it, assumed it was some kind of fancy “invisible” breakaway and even though I sensed something was wrong I tried snapping one of these with a pair of needlenose – epic fail and the 7 pin header I was shooting for became a 6 pin header :-( Duhhohh. LOL

What would the thickness of the plastic header be?
..would I be able to take one and after breaking it into four pin long strips, be able to stack them side by side and still maintain a .1" pitch not only from pin to pin.. but, ahh, beside one another, as well?

I really wish there were 4pin headers because i making a project using the arduino usb board to reprogram.
This product is good if your willing to lose a pin for every cut you make. Since these headers have thin plastic gaps, you cut through another pin, making you lose a pin….other wise this is a great product!!!

I cut mine with diagonal pliers… works great but the first few I cut sent the snipped pins flying across the room… now I cover with my hand while snipping.
as everyone says… you will lose a pin with each cut.

Ditto that. I usually get headers from Futurlec (they are slow but very cheap) however they do not stock 6 pin female headers.
I just cut mine from 40-pin stock like this. If you are stuck, don’t forget you can use right angle headers (sold here) and straighten the pins).

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3 of 3 found this helpful:

Note the short pins

These are great female headers, but be aware: if you want to stack your boards you might want to instead buy something like the Arduino Stackable headers (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10007). The Arduino Stackable headers have longer pins so you can… wait for it… stack boards that use them.

2 of 2 found this helpful:

Not break-away, but still good.

You ‘can’ cut these with wire-cutters, but it’s nearly impossible to do so without sacrificing one of the headers in the process. I typically just cut straight through one of the header pins so the other pins are untouched.

Worked for what I needed

I cut off a single hole and prong(yes I lost the one next to it like others have said) and smoothed it off with sandpaper. I soldered a wire to the male end so after a few minutes of work I had converted a wire to have a female slot that as stated mates very well onto male pins and is sturdy. Useful for prototyping and allows me to modify wires to female at a relatively decent price so it’s nice to have a strip around in case. Bought this after not finding exactly what I was hoping for and as I said it worked for what I needed. If an admin can point me in the direction of a female/female adapter that can attach to male pins as well as this does on one side and that I can plug and remove a wire from the other I would appreciate it.

Handy for prototyping

These are deep sockets that accept long or square pins, so they work well with male pin headers. They can be cut to length to form custom sockets for odd parts, unusual pinouts, breakout boards with pin headers on them, or anything you want to elevate some to clear components underneath. The insertion force isn’t too high, so it’s easy to plug a lot of pins into these at once when need be. I cut at a pin (losing that pin) to avoid breaking the plastic around another pin. This leaves a rough end, but that’s easily touched up with a file or emery board if you want a nicer looking end or need to fit right next to something.

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